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Rescue no-show appointments with OpenAI, Twilio SMS, and Google Sheets

Created by

Created by: AI Automation Playbook || aiautomationplaybook
AI Automation Playbook

Last update

Last update a day ago

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Quick overview

Dental and medical clinics, salons and spas, home-service businesses, consultants — anyone whose revenue depends on people showing up for appointments — plus agencies that want a sellable no-show recovery automation for local clients.

How it works

  1. Every 30 minutes the workflow reads today’s appointments from Google Sheets and flags no-shows — appointments whose time passed 15+ minutes ago and were never marked checked-in.
  2. For each no-show it pulls up to 3 open slots, an AI agent drafts a personal rescue SMS, and Twilio sends it within minutes.
  3. When the customer replies, YES rebooks the chosen slot automatically (new appointment row plus log entry), NO is logged as lost with no further messages, and anything unclear is logged for human review.
  4. A second schedule sends exactly one gentle nudge after 2 hours of silence, then stops forever — the nudge logic is self-limiting by design, so nobody ever gets messaged twice.
  5. Reply matching is phone-number based and tolerant of formatting differences.

Setup

  1. Connect your own Google Sheets OAuth2, Twilio and OpenAI credentials (all slots are placeholders — none are included)
  2. Fill the three CONFIG nodes (business name, Twilio number, sheet ID, and your business timezone, e.g. America/Vancouver — no-show detection compares appointment times against “now” in this timezone)
  3. Create Google Sheets tabs named Appointments (date, time, customer_name, phone, status, notes), OpenSlots (date, time, available) and RescueLog (sent_at, phone, customer_name, original_slot, slots_offered, status, notes)
  4. Paste the Twilio SMS Webhook production URL into your Twilio number’s messaging webhook
  5. Activate the workflow
  6. Mark check-ins in the Appointments sheet (status = checked-in) — that’s how the workflow knows who showed up
  7. Store phone numbers in E.164 format (+1...) so Twilio replies match

Requirements

  • An OpenAI API key
  • A Twilio account with a phone number
  • A Google account for Sheets

Customization

  • Change the 15-minute no-show threshold and the 2-hour nudge delay in the Code nodes
  • Adjust the AI model’s SMS voice in the agent’s system prompt
  • Swap the OpenAI model via the ai_model field in CONFIG
  • Extend reply handling (e.g. route unclear replies to Slack instead of just logging them)